HP just unveiled a shiny new logo.(And it's pretty damn good.)

Posted by Dom Neill on Tuesday 5 April 2016

HP just unveiled the newest addition to their Spectre line of premium notebooks, the Spectre 13. And it's a pretty good-looking piece of machinery; it's almost unthinkably thin at just 10.4mm, and does away with a lot of the gimmicks that other modern notebooks tend to include: it doesn't turn into a tablet, it doesn't turn into a dock for your phone; it's a laptop, and it looks more or less like you'd expect a laptop to look.

Granted, there are a couple of notable exceptions which stand this notebook out from the crowd, like its shiny bronze detailing and steampunk-esque display hinges, which in an interview with the Verge are described by HP's head of consumer notebooks as being inspired by cabinetry or high-end furniture (sounds crazy written down, but works surprisingly well in the flesh).

But it's not these features which are causing the most chatter online today; it's the fact that the Spectre 13 sports a brand-new logo. And it's pretty damn good.

Shitty user experience of the week:Sainsbury's self checkout.

Posted by Dom Neill on Monday 10 August 2015

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I love to have a bit of a rant and a moan about things in life which are, for want of a better word, just a little... shitty. I'm not talking about war or famine here, which are obviously extremely shitty, but the little user experience niggles we put up with on a daily basis which could be so much better if people could be bothered to do something about them.

In this series I'll be running down my biggest peeves when it comes to just plain bad user experience, and this week I'm starting with self checkouts. Not just any self checkouts; specifically the ones at popular British supermarket and convenience store chain, Sainsbury's.

My two favourite WebKit features coming to Safari 9.0 this autumn.

Posted by Dom Neill on Tuesday 28 July 2015

Every summer, designers and developers from around the world gather at Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco to see what the future of Apple's software platforms look like; it's an opportunity for Apple to give the public a sneak-peek of what to expect in the next major releases of OS X and iOS, and an opportunity for designers and developers to get their products ready to support any new technologies ahead of launch.

Now, aside from the keynote, most years about 90% of the content at WWDC goes way over my head; I don't develop apps, and my knowledge of Objective-C and Swift is limited, to say the least. But, as a web designer, with some experience of building web apps for Safari on iOS and OS X, there was one session in particular this year that really caught my eye.